Halloween at Clifty Falls

Roger here...  Better late than never.  We were supposed to meet our Indiana camping buddies at Clifty Falls State Park (on the Ohio River) on Thursday.  Due to a series of irritating, but not serious, setbacks (delay in finishing motor home, longer time needed to reload our stuff, trip to the grocery to put food in the empty fridge, and adding air to a couple of tires), we did not get there until late afternoon on Saturday.  

However, good times awaited us when we arrived.  Our friends were all there and enjoying each other's company.  I am not going to identify each person by picture, but Chuck, Cindy, Audrey, Pat, 

Jessica, Morgan, Kathy, Chris, Hannah, Linda, Linda and Linda were all there.  We had a great dinner of chili and hot dogs.

The dogs all had a great time, as well.  Lots of sniffing, wrestling, posing, and running.  Front to back:  Tequila, Bandido, Sophie, and Ranger (on the left).  Ranger and Bandido were so happy to have some off-leash ball chasing time.  Nice action-shot Dianne! (ball in the air, all four paws off the ground)

As the sun set, the jack-o-lanterns were lit.

And the costumes were donned.

Jessica with Ranger the Taxi

Audrey the Cereal Killer with Ranger

Sophie as a loofah sponge

Morgan and Jessica the illuminated stick people with Ranger (the photo hog)

Pat welcomed all the trick or treaters who wandered to the goodie table.  Pat cleans up well, does he not?

All of our friends left Sunday afternoon. 

Each of the rigs paid a visit at the "Chuck Gemmer Memorial Dump Station" on their way out of the campground.  Typically, facilities are not named after people during their lifetimes; however, I have a very distinct memory of this particular dump station and therefore reserve the right to name it after a living person.

This was the first place that I had ever dumped an rv's sewage tank.  It happened several years ago.  I had carefully studied the procedure.  I did not want to have a Robin Williams moment.  I was hoping that no one would pull up behind us because I did not want witnesses.  Then another rig pulled up.  Crap.  Then a car door opened and I heard, "Mr. Norris!"  Crap, someone who knows me.  Then I heard, "Look, it's my junior high principal!"  Crap, one of my students.  Soon I was shaking Chuck's hand and talking with his son, Brian, his wife, Cindy and their neighbors.  

Fortunately, the dumping proceeded without incident.  During the process we talked about spring break and months later ended up going to the same campground on the Florida panhandle.  Since then we have camped (and kayaked) together many times and the group expanded to include Pat and Audrey, Jessica and others.  

So, this particular dump station is much more than it appears to be.  It is a monument to the formation of our camping group. :-).

We had planned to stay at Clifty Falls a couple of more nights after our friends left, but when we discovered that severe storms were forecast for our probable destination in Tennessee, we decided to stay for two additional nights.  Dianne had fun burning the rest of the firewood that Pat and Chuck left behind.  Update... the storms hit north, south, east and west of us.  It was a long night, but we evidently made the right decision.  We are currently parked in western Kentucky, hoping to visit the Verizon store in Paducah tomorrow.  

I always told my kids and my students to never look directly into the sun.  I don't think that is a problem today.  It is time to begin the journey to south Texas where the sun is brighter and the temperatures warm.  Time to trade the maple and oak trees for palm trees.  

The pet picture of the day shows Tequila checking out our new digs as we watch the approaching rain on the Weather Channel.

The End

Drenching Rains in Mission

Roger here....  The storm clouds are gathering.  Yay!!!!!   We are finally going to get a soaking rain in Mission.  

Dianne and I watched the radar on our I-phones.  It is headed this way!  We brought in the chair cushions and took pictures of the clouds as they rolled in.

The winds picked up.  It was blowing so hard that the water from our fountain blew away from the collecting bowl and onto the driveway.

I am so glad we spent the money to have gutters installed on the coach house.  We are really going to need them today.

Here it comes!  A four-incher!  Just to clarify, a four-incher in Indiana would mean four inches in depth.  A four-incher in Texas means four inches between the raindrops.  In Indiana, rain is measured with a rain gauge.  In Texas, rain is measured with a ruler.  






Dianne and I actually sat outside during the hour-long spitting of rain and enjoyed getting splattered even though we did not really even get wet.  Bandido thought it was fun.  

Ixora

All of last season's potted plants died during the five months we were away -- not nearly enough rain.  (Zero probably equates to not nearly enough).  We expected that would probably happen.  As Dianne mentioned in the last post, one of our first tasks was to buy new plants to replace them.  With daily watering, the new plants are doing well. 

Portulaca

Bougainvillea

Firecracker Plant

Since we were already playing in the dirt, we decided to add a couple large blue pots to our landscaped areas.

Pride of Barbados

We even found a place to grow a couple of tomato plants that Dianne grew from seed and has been babying in the motor home.  The pots are on rollers so we can move them inside if it gets too cold --- right now it is hard to imagine that it would ever get too cold here.


Almost all of the plants that were in the ground survived the drought.  Our planting areas and our lawn have an underground drip irrigation system.  However, I must say that they are doing even better with a daily squirt of water.


The survivors (a few of them)......

"Belinda's Dream" Shrub Rose

Aloe Vera

Dianne here:  They try to keep with organic landscaping here at Retama.  The other day the landscaping crew sprinkled composted manure on all the beds, and yesterday they came back with fresh mulch.  Roger and I have spread truckloads of mulch over the years at our various homes, and it's so nice to just enjoy the results here without the backbreaking sweat that goes along with it!  

Prickly Pear Cactus & Meyer Lemon

We measured lemon tree (I grew it from seed about 5 years ago) just before we left last May, and it was 16" tall.  The day we returned, Roger re-measured it, and it is now 24" tall (shown on the right in the above photo).  I guess lemon tree likes it here! 

The pet picture of the day shows Bandido inspecting the pumpkin zombie that appeared in our back yard after the drenching rain.  His first reaction was to growl at it while slowly slinking forward.  Then he figured out that it was one of Dianne's toys.

A final note from Dianne:  This little scarecrow (it's an iron frame with a loop on top to place a pumpkin head) has had several incarnations over the years, as shown in the following photos from our former home in Pendleton, Indiana:

White Pumpkin Scarecrow + "Little Mermaid" Kaia

Here it is another year, with another photo of a very young Kaia posing beside it (I've shown this photo before; it's still one of my favorites of Kaia):

Painted Pumpkin Head + Kaia

And finally, Kaia and her mom, Amanda, posing with my scarecrow on a different Halloween:

Amanda, Kaia, and Carved Head Pumpkin Scarecrow

I haven't been able to use my scarecrow frame for the past three years that we've been full-timing, so it was fun to get it out to use it here in Texas, with a few minor modifications!  A real pumpkin wouldn't last a week in 90+ degree temps, so we found a metal one here at the local grocery store.  I substituted a small prickly pear cactus instead of a basket of apples for the same reason.

Tarantula Festival - Coarsegold, CA

Hi all -- Dianne here.  Just a short blog for Halloween, showing some of the sights we saw yesterday at the Tarantula Festival in Coarsegold, CA.   Coarsegold is a small, friendly town near our campground that we've really enjoyed these past three weeks.


Every year they sponsor a Tarantula Awareness Festival the Saturday before Halloween.  Evidently, tarantulas are very beneficial and not poisonous, but they get a "bad rap" because of their scary appearance.  

 -- Not sayin' I'd ever hold one, like these brave little kids, but I'm not as scared of them now that I've learned more about them.  (There are no tarantulas in Indiana, of course, so I had never actually seen one before we got to New Mexico this fall).

Some of the other activities included a "Hairy Leg Contest."  These three gals came in at the top three.   

For the little kids, there were pumpkin decorating activities...

...and tarantula races, using fake tarantulas that hop when the kids squeeze on an air bulb handle.  It was fun watching them!


  Of course, the kids came in costume.




Some four-legged kids also came in costume -- you know I couldn't leave without some photos of them!  Check out the giant stuffed tarantula riding on the black dog's back (easy to miss in the photo):

This little guy must have gone to my high school (We were the Frankfort Hot Dogs -- really!)

This greyhound wasn't in costume, but you know I couldn't resist a photo of it.

We also got to see the "meet and greet" of the greyhound with two of the costumed dogs.

Here's a close-up of the tarantula being held by the little girl in the above photo:

 

Here's an even bigger tarantula being held by a BIG man with BIG hands.  They may be beneficial, but you can be sure I'd let out a whoop if I came upon one of these suddenly!

We've come a long way from the festive fall displays we used to do at our stix and brix house.  The little goblin on the left is our granddaughter, Kaia, when she was little.

Here's what our festive display is this year:   

This is our Jack-O-Lantern car dressed up to scare the rodents out of the engine block!!  (There's a Jack-O-Lantern motor home similarly dressed, but one photo should suffice!)

For the whippet photo of the day I decided to use one of the older photos of the "boys" taken at our veterinarian's annual "Bark-toberfest."  There is always a photographer there ready to take photos (for a price).  We hadn't had Chaplin very long when this photo was taken.  It's an oldie but a goodie!!